Meal Provisioning - A Tip (And A List!) From Our Boat To Yours

My wife and I recently spent a week on our sailboat (8/18-8/25/2018). One of the challenges was determining what we wanted to do for meals while on the boat. We sat down one evening and discussed what meals we were going to cook. Once we knew what we wanted to eat, we started making the ingredients list. This allowed us to make the grocery store list for the items that we didn't have at home. Since we don't live on our boat full-time, we don't keep a lot of staples or spices on the boat so we had to bring everything to the boat.

Here is a list of things that we came up with. Obviously your meal preference will be different than ours, but it will give you an idea of the process that we went through to come up with everything that we needed for the week. I have made the list using check boxes so if you do use this list, you can check off the items as you buy or pack the items that you will be bringing to your boat. We knew we were going to eat off of the boat for three or four dinners and at least one breakfast so we didn't need too many provisions.

One of the tricks we used for spices was to combine all of the spices for a given recipe into a plastic zip lock bag. For example, the Pull-apart pizza bread recipe calls for parsley flakes, Italian seasoning, shredded basil and garlic powder. I measured out the recipe spice amounts and combined all of these spices into one plastic zip lock bag and then labeled the bag with the meal they were intended for (i.e. Pull-apart pizza bread). I also measured out the grated cheeses and combined those into a plastic bag as well. By measuring the amounts for the spices and cheeses ahead of time, it made the meal preparation go quicker.

I am going to save this list as a starting point for what we will need the next time we stay on the boat for several days. We can easily modify it and change the meal selections but many of the items remain the same. I hope you find this helpful in your meal provisioning.